Towards tackling issues of quackery in the engineering profession, the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN), has assured that it would strengthen its enforcement capacity through more visibility in places where critical engineering works are going on.

President of COREN, Kashim Abdul Ali who stated this in an interview with The Guardian in Lagos urged Nigerians never to relent in reporting anyone found to be a charlatan engaging in engineering activity in their environment.

He said; “What we are trying to do is to strengthen our enforcement capacity in such a way that we have presence everywhere there is a critical engineering activity going on and by that, we will have records of all the personnel involved and those that are not supposed to be there, would be fished out and dealt with. This is still a medium to longtime programme”.

“Quacks are barely impossible because nobody will come to say I am a quack. It takes an eagle eye to determine who is a quack. When we have report on quackery happening anywhere, we will go there to intervene and try to sort it out but when we don’t see and nobody reports to us, then, there is problem”.

Speaking on the recent signing of executive order 5, which seeks to promote local content in public procurement with science, engineering and technology components as well as planning and execution of projects, promotion of Nigerian content in contracts by President Muhammadu Buhari, Ali expressed optimism that its implementation would promote the involvement of Nigeria engineers in the development of the country.

According to him, it is also a challenge for indigenous engineers to be vigilant and do the right thing while the initiative is been implemented pointing out that COREN would collaborate with authorities to achieve success.

“For us engineers, we feel excited and see it like it is the second independence for Nigeria because since independence, what we have done is to hand over our treasures to foreigners to help us manage and among those whom we had hand over our treasure to, there are some good ones and there are some bad ones. The very bad ones are even more prominent than the good ones. What we have done over the past years is to do things the wrong way and the result is what we see everyday”

“It is an opportunity for us to participate more actively in the real development of our country and we would do this by been vigilant. If any engineering organisation for instance from the public sector chooses to invite those who are not qualified in calling for bid, at COREN level, we can intervene even at any point where it is discovered.

“There is no way out for those who want to do things in the wrong way. I will use this opportunity to call on my colleagues to be a lot more vigilant because what we have been praying for over the years have been given to us and we just have to show gratitude to government”, he stated.

The Corporate Affairs Commission also sits with us and our committees. We are going to strengthen our relationships and would get across to them to immediately take action”, he said.